To what extent land interruption through farming and development has on our climate and what can be done to promote sustainability is the focus of a research grant awarded to a professor in the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering.

Gang Chen, professor of civil and environmental engineering, is the principal investigator for the $1.18 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Among the team of experts is Aavudai Anandhi Swamy, assistant professor of agricultural and biological system engineering at Florida A&M University’s College of Agriculture and Food Sciences.

Chen also will work with environmental engineers, agricultural and biological system engineers, chemists, economists and forestry experts.

“For example, how does deforestation affect the amount of rain in an area? How can you adapt areas that are prone to flood? These are major challenges,” Chen said, describing the focus in a news release.

Collectively, the researchers will use data on water quantity and quality, air quality, soil property, soil usage, precipitation, from various agencies, like the U.S. Geological Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Forest Service.

“The result of our preliminary research found that there was a lot of data available,” Chen said. “But few studies looked at the vulnerability aspects of this problem — whether the agricultural system will be impacted to the level that it may lose resilience in response to events such as climate change. So we are focusing on vulnerabilities using specific models.”

Aavudai Anandhi Swamy, assistant professor of agriculture and biological systems engineering at Florida A&M University.(Photo: Special to the Democrat)

The data will be used in models Swamy has created to determine whether an agricultural system is stressed.

Researchers hope to determine how best to strike a balance between the need to produce food while maintaining sound environmental practices.